Emergency planning

The aim of an emergency plan is to help staff respond effectively to an emergency at school or on an educational visit.

Your emergency plan should be generic enough to cover a range of potential incidents that could occur, including:

• serious injury to a pupil or member of staff (eg transport accident)
• significant damage to school property (eg fire)
• criminal activity (eg bomb threat)
• severe weather (eg flooding)
• public health incidents (eg flu pandemic)
• the effects of a disaster in the local community

The guidance and resources in this section will help you develop a resilience culture, and have the forethought and planning to be able to adapt and respond to emergencies which can and do happen within schools and surrounding communities.

We know that there's no such thing as 'one size fits all'. Having a realistic emergency plan, with trained staff, can make a big difference. Is your school prepared for the worst? If you have an emergency plan sitting on a shelf, dusting it down each year to make sure names and contacts are up to date, you're not ready, and during a crisis - it will show.